Friday, February 20, 2015

Tourists vs Locals in Bangkok

This week Eric Fischer's Locals and Tourists
map has correctly been getting a lot of love again on social media. The map analyses Twitter data to highlight areas of cities popular with locals and the places where
tourists visit.

His city maps show the locations of Tweets sent by locals
(those who post in one city for one consecutive month or more) and tourists
(whose tweets are usually posted in another city). The maps provide a fascinating insight into locations that are popular with tourists and into areas which are popular with locals but go largely unseen by tourists.

One thing missing from the maps is an actual street map. The result is that unless you are a local yourself you probably won't be able to identify the locations which show up as clusters (for locals or tourists) on the map.

Greg to Differ has tried to overcome this omission in Eric's maps by overlaying the Twitter data for Bangkok on a series of static Google Maps. In Tourists vs Locals: Mapping Where People Tweet in Bangkok Greg examines different Bangkok neighborhoods, using his local knowledge to examine the data in each map and explain the local locations that appear popular with locals and the locations favored by tourists.

Each static neighborhood map includes a transparency control which allows you to adjust the opacity of the Twitter overlay and compare it with the road map underneath,